CLEVELAND — Women's professional basketball in Cleveland is officially back.
After months of waiting for an announcement following Rock Entertainment Group's announcement that it had put in a bid for Cleveland to get a WNBA expansion team, the WNBA announced on Monday that Cleveland is one of three cities to win their bid.
WNBA Commissioner Cathy Englebert made the announcement Monday morning, sharing the news that Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia won their bids for expansion teams.
While the original name has not yet been confirmed to return, professional women's basketball returns to the city that was once passionate about the team. The original Cleveland Rockers played in Cleveland from 1997 to 2003 before the franchise was dissolved after ownership fell through.
Cleveland will be the league's 16th franchise and is set to debut in 2028.
The team will play its home games at Rocket Arena in downtown Cleveland, with the Cleveland Clinic Courts in Independence set to become the exclusive training and practice facility of the Cleveland WNBA team.
There has been a lot of buzz about this possibility since February:
RELATED: Excitement stirs around report of WNBA expansion team coming to Cleveland
After the WNBA made the announcement on Monday, Cleveland's future team received an outpouring of support from their counterparts, the Cleveland Cavaliers.
A few familiar faces are just as excited as we are that the WNBA is coming to the Land! #LetEmKnow pic.twitter.com/Iyq5WCaX6V
— Cleveland WNBA (@clevelandwnba) June 30, 2025
There's even community support coming from The W Sports Bar, which usually isn't open on Mondays.
But the co-founders told New 5 they opened their doors to celebrate the WNBA’s return to Cleveland.
“For me, this is a super full circle moment,” said Shelley Pippin, Co-Founder of the W Sports Bar. “It’s something that’s a long time coming in my opinion.”
On Monday, dozens of eager fans packed the inside of the local sports bar to celebrate Cleveland’s transition from The Land to the league.
Now, Pippin and Ally Eclarin said they get to show the rest of the country why Cleveland is deserving of a WNBA team.
“For everyone that’s like, 'Why Cleveland? Why not Cleveland?' I mean it’s long overdue,” said Eclarin, Co-Founder of the W Sports Bar. “Knowing that this was a potential and now that it’s real, I mean this is just, it’s everything.”
While Eclarin believes this rebound should have happened sooner, both women said they never lost faith that the day would eventually come.
“It’s a thing that we deserve in this city. We have a such a strong fan-base in this community and adding another professional sports team is such a tremendous win for the entire city,” said Pippin.
Still, the moment is surreal for them and fans like Hannah Christ, who told News 5 she’s been a WNBA fan since the days of the Cleveland Rockers.
“I mean to be able to have one of these teams back in this expansion draft really speaks to the fan base that we have here and the dedication that we have to Cleveland sports,” said Christ.
David Gilbert, the CEO of Destination Cleveland and the CEO of Greater Cleveland Sports Commission, told News 5 he’s also celebrating this pivotal moment and the economic impact of adding another sports team in Cleveland.
“I just think it expands our entire universe of how sports will continue to be a strong, critical force in our economy, a strong critical force in the perception of Cleveland and in the self-pride that we all have,” said Gilbert.
Future Cleveland WNBA team memberships are being launched, with fans already able to place a $28 initial payment for a membership on the official Cleveland WNBA website.
“The demand for women’s basketball has never been higher, and we are thrilled to welcome Cleveland, Detroit, and Philadelphia to the WNBA family,” Engelbert said. “This historic expansion is a powerful reflection of our league’s extraordinary momentum, the depth of talent across the game, and the surging demand for investment in women’s professional basketball.”
All three new teams announced Monday have NBA ownership groups. Each paid a $250 million expansion fee, which is about five times as much as Golden State dished out for a team a few years ago. All three teams will also be investing more money in building practice facilities and other such amenities.
“It’s such a natural fit that when you already have this basketball-related infrastructure, these strategies, cultures that you find to be successful, combinations of personnel that you find to be successful,” said Nic Barlage, CEO of Rock Entertainment Group and the Cavaliers. “Extending that into the WNBA, is just a natural next progression, especially if you have a desire to grow like we do.”
Both Cleveland and Detroit had WNBA teams in the past, and Philadelphia was the home for an ABL team.
“This is a huge win for Detroit and the WNBA,” Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores said. “Today marks the long-hoped-for return of the WNBA to a city with deep basketball roots and a championship tradition. Detroit played a key role in the league’s early growth, and we’re proud to reignite that legacy as the WNBA ascends to new heights. Our plans will bring new energy, investment and infrastructure to our city and the WNBA, and additional resources to our community.”
Detroit sports stars Grant Hill, Chris Webber and Jared Goff will have minority ownership stakes in the team.
The Cleveland and Detroit ownership groups said the Rockers and Shock — the names of the previous teams — would be considered, but they’d do their due diligence before deciding on what the franchises will be called.
“Rockers will be a part of the mix for sure, but we are at this point, we’re not going to commit to a brand identity because we want to really get into it with our fans, do some research, be very thorough and thoughtful in that process,” Barlage said.
The Detroit and Cleveland teams will play at the NBA arenas that currently exist, while Philadelphia is planning on a new building that will be completed, hopefully by 2030.
“We tell the city it’s going to open in 2031. We’re hoping for 2030,” said Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment Managing Partner and co-founder Josh Harris, who owns the 76ers. “So we’re trying to underpromise and overdeliver. But, right now it’s 2031, so that we have a year gap, you know. We’ve got the Xfinity center, the Wells Fargo, they’ll play there.”
Adding these three teams will give the league more natural rivalries with another team on the East Coast, and Detroit and Cleveland are near each other.
“I think there’s some great historical rivalries in the NBA among these cities and, I think that will carry over to the WNBA,” Detroit Pistons vice president Arn Tellem said. “I would love nothing more to have a rivalry like we do in the NBA with Cleveland and Indiana, Philadelphia and New York and all these great cities and, and I think we will.”
Engelbert said she was impressed with the number of cities that bid for expansion teams, a list that included St. Louis; Kansas City, Mo.; Austin, Texas; Nashville, Tenn.; Miami; Denver; Charlotte, N.C.; and Houston.
“There are a variety of cities that obviously bid, and one of those I wanted to shout out — because they have such a strong history in this league and their great ownership group — is Houston,” Engelbert said. “The Houston Comets were just an amazing one, the first four inaugural championships in the WNBA. So I would say that’s the one, obviously, we have our eye on. (Owner) Tilman (Feritta) has been a great supporter of the WNBA, and we’ll stay tuned on that.”
Engelbert went on to say that she wanted to spread out the expansion over a few years to not dilute the talent pool.
“We didn’t know the demand would be where the demand ended up when we ran the process last fall into the winter,” Engelbert said. “Given the very high demand and supply, we wanted to evaluate, too, because we’re very careful about, you know, making sure we’re balancing the number of roster spots, the number of teams.
“But one thing I’m very struck by as we get into a new media deal, as the media market evolves, you know, being in these three big basketball cities is going to help from a media perspective, a corporate partners perspective.”
All the metrics, such as attendance, television ratings and sponsorships, have been on the rise over the last few seasons.
“You’re seeing the key performance indicators around the business, but then also just the communal impact of having a women’s professional sports team,” Barlage said. “The largest growing segment of our Cavs youth academy, which serves 60,000 kids across the state of Ohio and upstate New York, the fastest growing segment is girls. You know, it’s growing at a 30% clip year over year in participation rates. And so for us to be able to create role models, to be able to create symbols of progress, to create having ambassadors within the community representing all of these things.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
